Robots are after our jobs: what can we do?

Will smart automation, intelligent software bots and brainy robots take away our jobs anytime soon? The reaction may not be surprising in emerging countries like India, given that a majority of such employees would never have heard about the Industrial Revolution, or terms like disguised unemployment, cloud computing, machine learning, deep learning, automation or artificial intelligence -driven software bots. They would perhaps have also never heard of drones taking photographs and doing surveillance; of robots delivering pizzas and packages; of assistive robots taking care of the elderly; of robots making hamburgers and others like the Roomba robots that mop floors; of software bots writing articles and movie scripts; of three-dimensional or 3D printing revolutionizing the manufacturing sector; of driverless cars and trucks--all of which would make it very hard for them to imagine the future impact of these technologies that have not yet directly touched their lives or their jobs. While algorithms and hardware capability are improving rapidly, “we don’t have anything to worry about machines taking over in the near future”, Matthew Grob, executive vice president and chief technology officer at US wireless technologies company Qualcomm, said at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016 this February. The current trends, according to a January report on the ‘Future of Jobs’ by the World Economic Forum predicts that the current trend could lead to a net employment impact of more than 5.1 million jobs lost to disruptive labour market changes over the period 2015–2020, with a total loss of 7.1 million jobs—two thirds of which are concentrated in routine white collar office functions, such as office and administrative roles—and a total gain of 2 million jobs, in computer and mathematical and architecture and engineering-related fields.